


side by side, their faces blurred

by temporalDecay



Series: what will survive of us is love [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 00:53:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to <em><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/951146">on the wrong side, looking at the right side</a></em>.</p><p>Darkleer endures everything, including himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	side by side, their faces blurred

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Saeto15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saeto15/gifts).



You’re not as surprised as you honestly ought to be, when the Empress drops her culling fork and throws her arms around Karkat like he’s a ghost she desperately needs to be real. 

You’re old, older than you wish you were, and age has a way to drain that kind of emotion out of someone. (Though, you think, you probably never had much in you, to be drained in the first place.) You put a hand on the shoulder of a particularly twitchy woman who seems half tempted to stomp up there and tear the Empress herself away from her beloved Messiah, and shake your head slowly in a way that makes the rest of your little entourage relax. 

They trust you, by now, though you can’t be quite certain why. They look at you for guidance and advice which you still staunchly refuse to provide, because whoever said that with age came wisdom was a very foolish man. They are not afraid of you, either, not personally. They’re afraid of your wrath and the ease with which you snapped necks, when some idiotic fools refused to respect the boundaries Karkat set for himself. It’s not personal, and you find yourself comfortable enough with that. Karkat treats you personally enough, as it is, that you need the indifference of the rest of the world to even hope to balance it out. 

So you stand there, immovable, as the Empress shrieks in delight and bounces in place like a child, and when her eyes sweep over and stop on your face, you stare back with the same placid emptiness you’d do for anyone else. 

More so, indeed, when Karkat notices and buries his face in his hands, muttering too loudly for it to be a real mutter, about the perpetual lack of expression on your face. 

You’ve done your part, you think, and step back as more trolls approach and no further violence erupts. You’ve done your part, this is where you step into the shadows and vanish while no one’s looking. 

Except there’s a tiny hand holding onto yours, fiercely, and when you look down you find Karkat looking at you with almost as much challenge as fear. You are not surprised by his earnestness, no, but you are surprised by the pulse of desperate yearning under your ribs, so intense it nearly forces you to your knees. You barely sway in place, your inner demons as always imperceptible to those looking in from outside. 

“Yes,” you say, after a long silence, when you’ve found enough clarity to speak, and allow the sentimental fool to twine his fingers with yours. 

He didn’t have to ask, but then, you didn’t have to answer, either. 

  


* * *

  


There’s something deeply, deeply wrong, with him washing your hair like this. 

Beyond all the deeply, profoundly wrong and evil things you’ve done, to him and to others. But your throat closes up before you can say no, and you sit down and dutifully tilt your head so he’ll reach your scalp without straining, even as you imagine yourself baring your throat to a blade. It’s so deeply wrong, how much he enjoys fingering your hair and lathering the whole thing, pushing and pushing until he coaxes a low, deep purr from the depths of your chest. 

Two wrongs will not make a right, nobody knows that as well as you do. 

Still, when he’s done, you bury your face between his legs and make him cry out, as if the echo of his voice could erase the sordid ghost of yours. 

  


* * *

  


The Empress gave you extravagant quarters all for yourself, the kind that are well above someone of your blood. If your blood ever meant anything at all, anyway. You bow to her, because it’s expected that you do, and you sit in there and try to do as you’ve always done, telling yourself the change in locale does not mean anything. 

Hours into the first day, you find yourself pressing your face into your hands and choking on quiet, hysterical laughter as you realize what’s wrong with such a splendid block. 

You don’t know how to be alone, anymore. 

It’s not the extravagance that a disgrace like you shouldn’t have access to. It’s not the airy, wide space full of color and beautiful things. It’s not the trinkets casually left over a table that would be exceedingly well suited to work on, as if someone had known your habits and tried to accommodate them. 

No, it’s the quiet that gets to you. 

The lack of Karkat’s muttering and the faint sound of his steps as he paces around your worktable, personally offended over this or that particular show of stupidity. The passing of pages as he slumps in a corner and reads a book, humming to himself about this or that. 

The soft echo of his breathing somewhere nearby, as a reminder to keep your own steady and matched with his. 

And then, when you’re done laughing about the sheer ludicrous idea that the foolish brat has somehow managed to render you incompatible with your companion of eons, you stand up and decide to go do something about it, though you’re not yet certain what. 

You open the door, and there is Karkat, just about to knock, staring at you with wide, vibrant eyes and the same wordless understanding that makes you wish you had it in yourself to pull him into your arms nearly as much as you want to. You step back and then follow him into the block, and into the sumptuous recuperacoon in the corner furthest away from the windows. He doesn’t ask and you don’t object, and soon you’re lying side by side in thick, rich sopor, and his erratic purring lulls you dreamless sleep. 

  


* * *

  


You writhe up against the wall, legs dutifully opened wide and airsacks refusing to fill up with air. 

His hand destroys you, inside out, pressing against your walls in a sharp, constant reminder that it is not a bulge and you are still going to come as if it were. 

It’s the feeling of a pail being pressed between your knees that does you in, as you’re irrationally flustered by that, and a million other thoughts you dare not voice. 

  


* * *

  


“KK-Karkat,” the boy corrects himself, squinting at you suspiciously, “says he’s leaving. With you,” he adds, and the pause would be dramatic if his lisp weren’t so horrendous. 

You make a noncommittal sound and continue the delicate process of dismantling a toaster. Nobody asked you to dismantle the toaster and fix it, but you went down to the kitchens to forage in lieu of letting them treat you like someone actually important, and you found some of the servants squabbling over who broke the thing and who would report it. So you took it from their hands and decided to fix it, if only so they can have something else to argue about next time. 

“This is the part where you tell me why,” the boy adds, sparkling a little in red and blue, as if to emphasize his point. 

You refuse to acknowledge memories long buried and long twisted into scripture by the cult. You suppose he might be used to showing off his powers and using them as a threat, and if he is who you know for certain he must be, then his powers are by necessity not something to scoff at. 

But you’re old and tired and all the things that could be used to threaten you are things someone like him would never consider. 

“Ask Karkat,” you rumble quietly, finding the snapped wire that caused the machine’s untimely death. 

“He won’t tell me,” he sulks, and then glowers at you like it is your fault. It probably is, really, but there’s not much you can do about that, as opposed to a broken toaster. “Tell me,” comes the demand, hilariously petulant. 

“No,” you say, in a calm deadpan, as you finish replacing the wire. 

“You—“ 

“It is not,” you go on, putting the thing back together with ease, “my secret to share.” 

You don’t care about the thoughtful look he gives you, as you pick up the repaired machine and leisurely make your way out of the block. You don’t care about his story or his ancestor or your debt to him, because you won’t allow yourself to. 

You don’t care about the loud, profuse gratitude thrown your way from the staff, when you put the thing back right from where you took it. You’re fairly certain you walk out of the block in the middle of a sentence. 

You don’t care about anything, you tell yourself, and after all this time, you almost believe it. 

  


* * *

  


You torture yourself in the most creative ways you can think of; you’ve always been good at thinking up torture methods. 

Kurloz genuinely loved that about you, if nothing else. How cynical and detached you were, how willing to not care about the means if they took you to an end. 

Kurloz is long dead and you’re not, but that part of you has never changed. 

So you hold Karkat to your side as you wash the slurry and the sweat off his skin, studiously ignoring the pheromones drilling their way into your groin, where your bulge coils into knots and screams at you for attention. 

Instead you focus on him, passed out and trusting you to not do him wrong. 

It’s the trust, really, above the physical need, that makes you miserable beyond words. Particularly when he wakes up and forces your bulge down his throat, as far as it goes, and you’re left there, imagining him tearing into you with his teeth and knowing you’d deserve no less. 

  


* * *

  


“He’s my moirail.” 

You don’t look at him, because if you look, you’re certain you will crumble. You will be consumed with a need to know who he inherited his posture from, if his eyes and his hands and his grin are the same or if they got muddled down the gene pool. 

You don’t look at him, because if you look you will remember that night, they sky purple like the blood pouring everywhere – _the Grand motherfucking Highblood can’t up and die at the hands of a filthy shitlicking lowblood_ – and the precise pitch of his voice as his face was split by the same manic grin that claimed you eons prior – _so don’t motherfucking let me_ – and the ugly, wet sound of his throat crushed beneath your hands. 

You don’t look at him, because if you look at him you will have to acknowledge how at odds the past and the present are. You will have to make a choice about it, and you don’t trust yourself to make the right one, even now. 

“So don’t you up and forget that, motherfucker.” 

  


* * *

  


“More,” Karkat mewls against your chin, “ _more_.” 

You wheeze a laugh between your teeth and it comes out nearly a sob, there’s not much more you can give him, not with your bulge lashing lazily inside him and he sitting on your thighs, the lips of his nook feverishly hot against the skin of your groin. 

But you want to give him more, you want find what little speck of yourself is left to give him. Your claws ghost his back as your mouth works on leaving the most obvious bruise possible on his throat. 

“Anything,” you whisper, not really sure if you’re even making a sound, “you can have anything you want.” 

And then Karkat comes undone in your arms, and you feel it’s you who’s been given everything instead. 

  


* * *

  


"The furrocious huntress sees the big, strong troll is sad." 

You watch her scurry into the block with a hollow ache thumping in your chest. She stops at the other side of the workbench, peering at you over the rim, not so much cautious as playful, and it is as if someone where pealing the skin off your bones with delicate precision. 

"...a little bit,” you admit, voice rough even to your own ears, “perhaps." 

"The furrocious huntress would like to know why,” she says, face appearing over the edge of the table for a moment, before she retreats a little, “if it's okay to ask." 

In your hands, the tools are rendered useless by the effort it’s taking you to keep them steady. Now they’re dented and soon to be broken, and you still can’t bring yourself to unclench your fists. 

"You remind me of someone,” you offer her quiet, heartbroken smile, “that is all." 

She looks at you without fear or anger or disgust, and her curiosity is made all the more painful because of it. You don’t know if you can lie to her, but you desperately do not want to tell her the truth. 

It’s been millennia, now, but that is the one wound that will never stop bleeding, you think. 

"Did she make you sad?" She asks, tilting her head to the side and holding onto the table with her hands, which are small and strong, and you hate yourself for where your thoughts try to go. 

"No, I did—“ you swallow hard, smile crumbling at the edges as you offer yourself to be judged. “I made her very sad, and never got a chance to apologize." 

Her smile is soft and sweet and it guts you like a knife, from groin to neck, making you feel like your insides are spilling on the floor, tumbling gracelessly out of your husk. 

You realize you’re about to throw up, and swallow harshly instead, commanding your innards to behave themselves. 

"The furrocious huntress is certain the big strong troll would have been forgiven, no matter what," she grins, leaning over the table and reaching a hand to touch your arm. 

The fleeting touch feels like acid eating away your flesh. 

"It's kind of you to say that," you mumble, holding yourself together by the barest thread. 

"Not kind! True,” she winks, before pushing herself off the table and bouncing off with a strange feral grace. “So now the big strong troll has no reason to be sad at all." 

"I suppose he does not,” you find yourself replying, before your pan can catch up the slip. “Pardon, I do not." 

She giggles in delight at your stupidity, and even you cannot find a hint of mocking in the sound. She leaves, soon after that, and you don’t flip the table because you’re not four and a spoiled brat anymore. You go find Karkat, instead, and sit at his feet, chin hooked on his thigh, as he sits behind a massive desk, browsing important papers you can’t bring yourself to care about. 

He plays with your hair, though, and so long as you focus on the fingers tangled in it, you think you might survive this yet. 

  


* * *

  


He kisses your hands and you want to stop him, want to rebel against the blasphemy, because those hands have never done anything worth being praised for. 

But you’re his, so thoroughly, completely his, you can’t even remember when it happened, only that it did. 

You can’t even pretend to deny him anything anymore. 

  


* * *

  


“Should I—“ The boy starts, then stops abruptly, flushing and sweating and staring at you with the same horrified awe that always clouds his expression when you’re around. 

You try to remember if you were ever that expressive, even at that age, but you don’t think so. Your lusus was long dead, by then. You never mastered carelessness again, after you stained your hands with blood and began the all-consuming process of hating yourself. 

“Horuss,” you say, quiet and detached, ignoring the way your skin crawls as your lips pretend not to stumble over the old sounds. He gives you a desperate, lost look and all you can offer him is a thin ghost of a smile. “My name is Horuss.” 

He inches his way to the other side of the table, as if expecting you to lash out and send him away. You don’t know what you want more, your peace and quiet or the chance to talk to him, but you know you don’t deserve to even try. So if he wants to stay, he’ll stay. At least until he pieces it all together and realizes who and what you are. Then he will hate you, like you hate yourself, and you will be glad because at least then maybe he won’t have to hate himself, too. 

“Equius,” he mutters, almost too soft to be heard. 

You nod slowly, and let your hands and his hands and the things slowly coming into being between them to carry the conversation for you. 

  


* * *

  


“We don’t have to go back,” Karkat says, strangely lucid even in the midst of his peak, nuzzling the dip between your collarbones. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” 

“You like the Empress,” you say, without any real accusation in your tone, as you roll your bulge in a constant, measured S shape inside him, “you like the palace.” 

“Fuck that,” Karkat purrs, decadent and drunk in pleasure, “I like _you_.” He grins, pressing his hands on your chest and trying to roll his hips to the best of his ability. “What do you want?” 

_To not outlive you_ , you don’t say, even though you’re certain you’re no longer capable of taking another loss like that. Even though you’re sick and tired of being left behind and watching the most important people in your life die. 

He’s at his peak, rippling wantonly around your bulge and looking at you with glinting eyes. He doesn’t want to hear about the dark things bubbling deep in your mind. He wants you to love him and use him and make him feel like the center of your world. 

“You,” you say, half smile tugging at your lip before he leans in to kiss it, because he _is_ the center of your world, and it’s a monstrous thing, but you’re too old and worn out to resist it. “Just you.” 

Later, when he’s finally given to unconsciousness, you gather him in your arms, and wish dearly you still knew how to weep. 


End file.
